The History of Newton's Apple Tree by Richard G Keesing

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The history of Newton's apple treeR. G. KeesingPublished online: 08 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: R. G. Keesing (1998) The history of Newton's apple tree, Contemporary Physics, 39:5,377-391, DOI: 10.1080/001075198181874

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The history of Newton’s apple tree

(Being an investigation of the story of Newton and the apple and the history of Newton’ s apple treeand its propagation from the time of Newton to the present day)

R. G. KEESING

This article contains a brief introduction to Newton’ s early life to put into context the

subsequent events in this narrative. It is followed by a summary of accounts of Newton’ s

famous story of his discovery of universal gravitation which was occasioned by the fall of an

apple in the year 1665/6. Evidence of Newton’ s friendship with a prosperous Yorkshire

family who planted an apple tree arbour in the early years of the eighteenth century to

celebrate his discovery is presented. A considerable amount of new and unpublished pictorial

and documentary material is included relating to a particular apple tree which grew in the

garden of Woolsthorpe Manor (Newton’ s birthplace) and which blew down in a storm

before the year 1816. Evidence is then presented which describes how this tree was chosen to

be the focus of Newton’ s account. Details of the propagation of the apple tree growing in the

garden at Woolsthorpe in the early part of the last century are then discussed, and the results

of a dendrochronological study of two of these trees is presented. It is then pointed out that

there is considerable evidence to show that the apple tree presently growing at Woolsthorpe

and known as `Newton’ s apple tree’ is in fact the same specimen which was identi® ed in the

middle of the eighteenth century and which may now be 350 years old. In conclusion early

results from a radiocarbon dating study being carried out at the University of Oxford on

core samples from the Woolsthorpe tree lend support to the contention that the present tree

is one and the same as that identi ® ed as Newton’ s apple tree more than 200 years ago. Very

recently genetic ® ngerprinting techniques have been used in an attempt to identify from

which sources the various `Newton apple trees’ planted throughou t the world originate. The

tentative result of this work suggests that there are two separate varieties of apple tree in

existence which have been accepted as `the tree’ . One may conclude that at least some of the

current Newton apple trees have no connection with the original tree at Woolsthorpe Manor.

Introduction

Who does not know the name of Newton is imperishable

connected with an . . . apple? The story has been often repeated

and often rejected. Those who are attached to it, however, will

learn to their satisfaction that Professor Rigaud [Savillian

Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford, 1827 ±

1839] thinks it derived from unquestionable authority: and,

moreover . . . the apple tree (now converted into a chair) is

preserved at Woolsthorpe to testify to it to this day. (The

Edinburgh Review , 1843: 419).

The story of Newton observing the fall of an apple and

`discovering the law of gravity’ has been told to countless

generations and now has the status of a legend. When I ® rst

heard it I assumed that it was just an amusing anecdote. It

was on a visit to Woolsthorpe Manor, in Lincolnshire,

Newton’ s birthplace, in 1976 that I was surprised to learn

that there was more to the story than I had realized. More

surprising was the claim that a grafted cutting from the

original apple tree was still growing in the garden. I recall

looking at the small tree by the main door of the manor

house with amazement and disbelief and wondering on

what evidence this claim was based.

Over the years I have unearthed a considerable quantity

of documentary evidence concerning the history of the

story and the particular tree which has been quite taxing to

come by. However there have been two instances which

were completely unexpected, one of which brought forward

a wealth of material without which this investigation wouldAuthor’ s address: Department of Physics, University of York, Heslington,

York YO10 5DD, UK; e-mail: rgk1@ york.ac.uk.

Contemporary Physics, 1998, volume 39, number 5, pages 377 ± 391

0010-7514/98 $12.00 Ó 1998 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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have been stillborn. This occurred on a visit to the late

Major H.B. Turnor in the spring of 1977 , the last private

owner of Woolsthorpe Manor. It transpired that the

Turnor family had owned Woolsthorpe from the time of

Newton and possessed records of the house from the early

part of the eighteenth century. Amongst these was a

drawing of the apple tree’ taken 150 years earlier. After all

the years of searching, this remains the most important

single piece of evidence for there being a distinct,

identi ® able tree from which Newton observed the apple

fall. The second occurred on a visit to Woolsthorpe Manor

in September 1977 to photograph the house from the site of

the original tree. I was walking backwards composing the

scene from the Turnor drawing through the view ® nder of a

camera when I found myself lying upon my back.

Regaining my feet I looking round and was amazed to

® nd that I had fallen over what appeared to be the tree

illustrated in his drawing. Even now the memory of the

event is disorientating for I recall the confusion of not

knowing whether I was in the year 1820 or 1977. The

surprise was compounded by the fact that on an earlier visit

the warden of the property had not mentioned the existence

of this ancient tree which was held by some to be a

regeneration of Newton’ s original apple tree.

The sequence in which I shall present the facts of this

investigation is anything but the order in which they have

emerged. Firstly the accounts of the various versions of the

story will be discussed in order to establish the historical

background. It should be noted that some of this material has

appeared in an article by McKie and de Beer [1], however it is

necessary to recount it here for reference and completeness.

A brief note on the early life of Sir Isaac Newton

As so many of the events surrounding this investigation

took place in and around Newton’ s home and not everyone

will be familiar with the background to Newton’s early life,

I feel it is well to introduce a brief biographical sketch of

the man to put the following narrative into context. Isaac

Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor near Colster-

worth some seven miles south of Grantham in Lincolnshire

on Christmas day 1642. His parents had married in the

previous April, however his father died suddenly in the

September, some three months before his son and heir was

born. Newton’s mother, Hannah, was the daughter of a

local clergyman, James Ayscough, and her brother William

was also a local clergyman. Subsequently, Newton’ s uncle

William was appointed to be his guardian until such time as

he came of age and could manage his estate. And so it was

that because of the circumstances of his birth, Newton

owned Woolsthorpe Manor, for the whole of his life. If the

trauma of his being born an orphan were not enough, his

mother remarried before Isaac was three years old. He was

left at Woolsthorpe in the care of his grandmother while his

own mother went to live with the Rev. Barnabus Smith at

North Witham, a mile or so away. Smith was 63 years old

and of some considerable means. Thus the young Newton

was brought up without either parent until he was about 11

years old when his mother returned to the farm after the

death of her second husband. By this time she had three

more children with her, two girls and a boy.

Newton learned to read and write at two `dame schools’ in

the area and at the age of 11 went to King’ s School in

Grantham where he lodged with the local apothecary, a Mr

Clark, during the week, returning home at the weekends.

For the ® rst three years at King’ s School, Newton was

normally near the bottom of the class. It seemed that he was

academically able, but his interests lay elsewhere. He, for

instance, enjoyed making mechanical devices, sun dials,

water clocks and the like and may have found regular school

work dull. A much recorded incident was to change all this.

It concerned a ® ght which Newton had with Richard Storer,

the stepson of the apothecary Clark. There had been some

disagreement between them and Storer had kicked Newton

in the stomach. As a result Newton challenged him to a ® ght.

After school they set about resolving their diŒerences and

Newton, the smaller boy, delivered such a beating to Storer

that he pleaded for mercy, but Newton not yet satis ® ed,

dragged the poor boy across to a wall and rubbed his nose

into it. The dispute being settled Newton seemed to have

resolved to overtake Storer in class and in doing so overtook

the rest of the school. It soon became clear to his school

master that they had in their midst a more than averagely

capable young man. However at the age of 16 Newton’s

mother decided that he had had enough of education and he

should start learning to look after his farm. This was a

disastrous mistake, for not only was Isaac useless at

managing a farm, he seems to have resented the interruption

in his education, and his behaviour so antagonized his

mother that after a year she gave up the unequal struggle and

returned him to school, where he was to prepare for the

university for he was un® t for anything else’ !

Newton entered the University of Cambridge as a student

of Trinity College on 5 July 1661. He was 18 years old.

Possibly because of his mother’ s pique she would only

provide him with an income of £10 per year and so he was

forced to work as a college servant to pay his fees. In his third

year he was relieved of this duty by being awarded a Trinity

scholarship and he subsequently graduated in January 1665.

Whatever the intentions of his family, and it is thought

that Newton was to study theology or law, he actually went

to lectures by Isaac Barrow (the ® rst Lucasian Professor of

Mathematics) on optics and mastered the new subject of

co-ordinate geometry, amongst other things. Over the next

four years Newton became a junior fellow and then senior

fellow of his college and in 1669 the Lucasian Professor of

Mathematics. He was now 26 years old and had for several

years been `at the prime of his age for invention’ .

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It was in the summer of 1665 that the University sent its

fellows back to their various homes because the plague was

approaching the town. The university opened for a few

months between March and June 1666, but otherwise

Newton was away until April 1667 . It was about this period

that Newton gave the oft quoted account of his discoveries:

In the beginning of 1665 I found the Method of approximating

series and the Rule for Reducing any dignity of any Binomial

into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of

Tangents of Gregory and Slusius, and in November had the

direct method of ¯ uctions and the next year in January had the

Theory of Colours and in the May following I had entrance

into ye inverse method of ¯ uctions. And in the same year began

to think of gravity extending to ye orb of the Moon and . . . I

deduced the forces which keep the Planets in their Orbs must be

reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centres

about which they revolve . . . All this was in the two plague

years of 1665 ± 6. For in those days I was in the prime of my age

for invention and minded Mathematics and Philosophy more

than at any time since [2].

Although this account comes from his old age Newton

described, in a letter to Halley on 14 July 1686 [3] how he

had shown, some 20 years earlier, that the force of gravity

must fall oΠas the inverse square of the distance. This

was from a consideration of Kepler’ s laws of planetary

motion. As he already had the relation between centrifu-

gal force and distance, it was a straightforward matter to

calculate the orbital period of the Moon knowing its

distance from the Earth and the terrestrial gravitational

acceleration.

This is not the place to describe the many momentous

events of Newton’s academic life, however they culminated

in his great work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathe-

matica published in London in July 1686/7. This treatise

which systematizes the mechanics of the universe is without

doubt the greatest work of scienti® c genius that the world

has yet seen. Newton left Cambridge in 1697 to become

Master of the Mint. He was elected president of The Royal

Society in 1703 and knighted by Queen Anne in 1705. He

died in 1726, was given a `state funeral’ and his body was

interred in Westminster Abbey.

After this detour I wish now to return to the central

issue.

Accounts of the story which Newton told of his discovery of

the law of universal gravitation

The ® rst account to appear in print was published in 1727,

the year of Newton’s death, by Voltaire [4], it states:

Isaak Newton walking in his garden had the ® rst Thought of his

System of Gravitation, upon seeing an apple fall from a tree

This account seems to have been transmitted by New-

ton’ s niece, Catherine Barton, who for many years was his

companion and housekeeper while he lived in London

during the years 1697 ± 1726. A second account was

published in the same year coming from the Cambridge

natural philosopher Robert Greene [5], and states (in

translation from the Latin):

This was written by me when I re¯ ected that Newton’ s theory of

gravity is the beginning of everything . . . this celebrated theory

has its origin like all our knowledge, it is said, from the apple.

This I heard from the most learned and intelligen t man . . .

Martin Folkes esquire . . .

A further account appears in John Conduitt’ s collection

for a biography of Sir Isaac Newton [6]. Conduitt married

Newton’ s niece and was also his assistant at the Mint,

becoming master upon the death of Newton in 1726. The

account reads:

. . . and in the year 1665 when he retired to his own estate on

account of the Plague, he ® rst thought of his system of gravity

which he hit upon by observing the fall of an apple from a tree.

The actual account in Conduitt’ s own hand appears in

Figure 1. In an extended version [7] Conduitt states:

In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge . . . to his

mother in Lincolnshire & while he was musing in a garden it came

into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an

apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain

distance from the earth, but that this power must extend much

further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon

thought he to himself & that if so, that must in¯ uence her motion

& perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a-calculating

what would be the eŒect of that supposition but being absent

from his books & taking the common estimate in use among

Geographers and seamen before Norwood had measured the

Earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of

latitude on the surface of the earth, his computation did not agree

with his theory & inclined him to entertain a notion that together

with the force of gravity there might be a mixture of that force

which the Moon would have if it was carried along in a vortex . . .

Yet another version was given by William Stukeley who

visited Sir Isaac Newton on 15 April 1725/6, as his diary

records:

Ap.15. I din’ d with him at his Lodgings alone, at Orbels

building s Kensington: His breakfast is of orange peel boiled in

water . . .

Although the account of the incident of the apple does

not appear in Stukeley’ s diary, it is recounted in his

History of Newton’ s apple tree 379

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biography of Newton which remained in manuscript form

until the 1930 ’ s [8].

... After dinner, the weather being warm we went into the

garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees,

only he and myself. Amidst other discourses, he told me that he

was just in the same situation , as when formally the notion of

gravity came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an

apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood.

A further reference to the story which has recently

surfaced comes from Newton’ s friendship with William

Dawson. As far as I am aware none of his biographers

refers to this friendship or mention that Newton used on

occasion to stay with the Damsons at LancliŒe Hall in

North Yorkshire. William Dawson’ s entry in Alumni

Cantabriegensis (1922 : 22) states:

Dawson William, adm. pens. (age 15) at Christ’ s Jan 28, 1691 ±

2. S(on) of Christopher (1663) ...B.A. 1695 ± 6 ... An able

mathematician and classical scholar. A friend of Isaac Newton.

Died June 25th 1762.

It is likely that William Dawson was taught by Isaac

Newton in the last years of his residence at Cambridge.

Further, in The Craven and North-West Yorkshire High-

lands, by H. Speight, London (1892: 113 ± 114) it is stated

that:

William Dawson was a man of high classical learning and was

one of the few people living at the time who could comprehend

Isaac Newton’ s Principia Philosophae.

Speight continues:

The great philosopher is said to be an occasional visitor of

Major Dawson at LancliŒe Hall, who had an arbour purposely

constructed in the garden for him, wherein he is said to have

passed many hours in solitary meditation . . . Before the

rearrangement of the gardens and outbuildings there was a

rookery and a small orchard at the north side of the house,

where the kitchen garden now stands and two old apples yet

remain. It is here where Newton’s arbour stood, and the two

fruit trees are credited with having sprung from an old tree

planted by the Major to commemorate the philosopher’ s great

discovery of the law of gravitation, from the well known story

of his watching an apple fall while sitting alone in his home

garden at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire.

More weight is given to Newton’ s friendship with

William Dawson when it is realized that his nephew, the

Rev. Benjamin Smith, was rector of Linton in Wharfdale

from 1733 ± 1776. Whether or not Dawson had the account

of the apple from Newton I have been unable to determine,

however he planted an apple tree arbour to celebrate the

account in the early years of the eighteenth century.

And so it was that Newton recounted the incident to

many people. There can be little doubt that it was through

the fall of an apple that Newton commenced his specula-

tions upon the behaviour of gravity and that this occurred

in the plague years 1665 ± 6. I would emphasize John

Conduitt’ s account and particularly the last sentence:

his computation did not agree with his theory and inclined him

to entertain a notion that together with the force of gravity

there might be a mixture of the force which the moon would

have if it was carried along in a vortex . . .

Here the `vortex’ refers to Descarte’ s theory which

attempted to explain planetary motion in terms of vortices

in the aether. When Newton ® rst estimated the orbital

period of the Moon he found that his calculations were in

Figure 1. An account of Newton’s discovery of universal

gravitation in John Conduitt’s hand. Conduitt was Newton’s

assistant at the Royal Mint and married his niece Catherine

Barton. (From the Portsmouth Manuscripts, Kings College

Cambridge. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and

Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge.)

R. G. Keesing380

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considerable error. At the time, he seems to have been

unaware that this error lay in an underestimate of the

Earth ± Moon distance and consequently concluded that

vortices could play a part in controlling the moon’ s

motion. This could then explain why Newton left the

subject for so long before taking it up again in the

Principia. It should be noted that an accurate value of the

Earth ± Moon distance had been known since Richard

Norwood surveyed the London ± York road between 1633

and 1635 and determined the number of miles per degree

to be 69.5. This result was published in A Sea-Mans

Practice (London, 1637).

The ownership of Woolsthorpe Manor (Newton’s birthplace)

The fact that there exists documentary evidence relating to

a particular apple tree associated with Newton’ s discovery

of universal gravitation is to a large extent due to the

continuity of ownership of Woolsthorpe Manor by the

Turnor’ s of Stoke Rochford from the time of Newton to

the present day. After Isaac Newton’ s death in 1726 the

farm passed to his heir-at-law one John Newton. In 1732

John Newton sold it to Thomas Alcock who then disposed

of it to Edmund Turnor in 1733. The ownership of

Woolsthorpe Manor stayed in the Turnor family for 210

years through the following line:

Edmund Turnor (1688 ± 1769): purchased in 1733, aged 45

Edmund Turnor (1715 ± 1805): succeeded in 1769, aged 54

Edmund Turnor FRS (1754 ± 1829): succeeded in 1805, aged 51

Christopher Turnor (1809 ± 1886): succeeded in 1829, aged 20

Christopher Turnor (1873 ± 1940): succeeded in 1886, aged 13

Herbert Turnor (1886 ± 1980): succeeded in 1940, aged 54.

Woolsthorpe Manor is now owned in perpetuity by the

National Trust. The Turnors were a wealthy Lincolnshire

family who bought the farm to increase their holding of

land; they never lived in the house, but let it to the

Woollerton family who lived there during most of the

period of the Turnor ownership. There was thus continuity

of ownership and occupation from a mere six years after

Newton’ s death to the present day. I ® rst met Major

Herbert Turnor in March 1977 and had a lengthy

correspondence with him, and it is from him that important

elements of this account come. Further I have been

fortunate to have been able to discuss the history of the

Woollerton family’ s involvement with the last person to

have been born there, Ms Marion Woollerton, who has

been of considerable assistance.

The speci® c apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor

The ® rst mention of a speci® c apple tree associated with

Newton’ s own account of his speculations upon the nature

of universal gravitation appears in the book Collections for

the History of the Town and Soak of Grantham , by Edmund

Turnor FRS (1754 ± 1829) published in 1806. A footnote on

page 160 states that:

The apple tree is now remaining and is showed to strangers.

This is 80 years after Newton’s death. The tone of the

statement is purely factual, and one concludes that

Edmund Turnor accepted the tree as the one from which

the famous apple fell, for it had been growing on what was

one of the family farms from a time long before his birth.

This view is supported by the account of the tree which

accompanies a small log in the possession of the Royal

Astronomical Society in London, from a Mr Walker, dated

12 January 1912:

The little log of wood I am sending to the Secretary of the

Royal Astronomical Society, is a piece of an apple tree at

Woolsthorpe, the home of Sir Isaac Newton . . . The history of

this piece of wood, and the way in which I came to have it, is

as follows: My father Richard Walker, was born at Bradmore,

Nottinghamshire, at the Manor Farm there in 1807. He went

to school, when he was 10 or 12 years of age, to the clergyman

of Stoke, Lincolnshire, named Pearson. [Author’ s note: it

turned out that Pearson was not the clergyman but his curate,

as the Bishop’s Visitation in Lincoln County Records O� ce

show]. My father told me that while he was at school there,

there was a very severe storm of wind one night, and that in

the morning news came that Sir Isaac Newton’ s apple tree had

blown down at Woolsthorpe. The school master, Mr Pearson

and several of the boys at once set oŒfor Woolsthorpe, where

Sir Isaac Newton’s home was, and which is not far from Stoke,

and just on the Lincolnshire side of Belvoir Castle. When they

arrived there they saw the old apple tree lying on the ground. It

had been propped up all round for many years, and every

eŒort had been made to preserve it. My father said it lay there,

having by the force of the wind, blown over its props. He said

that he did not know by what authority Mr Pearson acted, but

that he obtained a saw from somewhere and sawed a good

many logs of wood from the branches. My father got one of

these pieces, which he always kept as being a most interesting

relic. Various friends and other people often tried to induce my

father to part with it, but he always refused, as he prized it very

much indeed.

My father often showed the piece of wood to me, repeating the

circumstances under which he got it. There cannot be the least

doubt of its coming into his possession in the way I have said.

From the description of the tree’ s being propped up for

many years, and every eŒort being made to preserve it, one

must conclude that the tradition of the tree was very well

established by the latter part of the eighteenth century.

History of Newton’ s apple tree 381

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Further evidence for the existence of the apple tree comes

from Sir David Brewster FRS (1781 ± 1868), the ® rst

biographer of Sir Isaac Newton. In his biography, The

Life of Sir Isaac Newton (London, 1831) a footnote to page

344 states:

The anecdote of the falling apple is mentioned neither by Dr

Stukeley nor by Mr Conduitt and, as I have not been able to

® nd any authority for it whatever, I did not feel myself at liberty

to use it.

In Brewster’ s second and much extended biography,

Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, Edinburgh 1855, he had had

time to consult the Portsmouth Papers and stated in a

second footnote on page 27 that:

Neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who received from Newton

the History of his ® rst ideas of gravity, records the story of the

falling apple. It was mentioned , however, to Voltaire by

Catherine Barton, Newton’ s niece, and to Mr Green by Martin

Folks, the President of the Royal Society. We saw the apple tree

in 1814, and brought away a piece of one of its roots. The tree

was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820, and the

wood carefully preserved by Mr Turnor of Stoke Rochford.

While he was again there in 1830 Brewster drew a map of

the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor upon which he marked

the position of the tree. This came to light when a small

cardboard box was examined at the Royal Society in

London. It had contained some pieces of the apple tree

collected by Brewster, and a copy of Brewster’s map made

by Professor J.D. Forbes (1809 ± 1868 , Professor of Natural

Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh). However at

the time of examination, the box was empty apart from the

following memorandum (® gure 2) written by Professor

George Forbes FRS, the son of J.D. Forbes. It is undated,

unsigned and written on Athenaeum note paper. The

contents of the note is as follows:

In April this year I oŒered the Royal Society two relics. One was

a piece of the remains of the tree, well known as Newton’ s apple

Tree because there was reason to believe that Newton, while

sitting in the little garden of his home, saw an apple fall, and that

this started him on the many problems lying dormant in his

mind, to discover whether terrestrial gravitation’ that gives

weight to things on the Earth’ s surface is the same force that

gives motion to the solar system. The second relic (of

identi ® cation and authenticity) was a sheet of paper explaining

how it came into his hands. He told how the tree was in its old

age propped up for many years by loving hands until it was

blown down in a gale in 1820. The tree was removed and a chair

was made of it. My father gave the name of this well known

neighbour. In 1830 Sir David Brewster visited the house where

Newton was born, saw around the little garden and the place

Figure 2. George Forbes’ account of Brewster’s visit to

Woolsthorpe Manor in 1830 during which he took specimens

of the root of Newton’s apple tree and drew a map of the site

where it grew. (Reproduced by permission of The Royal Society,

London.)

R. G. Keesing382

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where Newton used to sit in full view of the single apple tree in

the garden. My father’ s holographic statement goes on to say

that Sir David cut this piece of the remains and presented it to

him (J.D.F.) very shortly afterwards. The dates are given in the

corner of the document written by my father, there is a sketch

(copied from Sir David Brewster’ s) or plan of the house and little

garden, with the site of the apple tree root marked by a circle.

The map which was at one time in the box is now

missing; however George Forbes states in a footnote on

page 52 of his book, History of Astronomy, (London, 1921):

The writer inherited from his father (Professor J.D. Forbes) a

small box containing a bit of wood and a slip of paper, which

had been presented to him by Sir David Brewster. On this paper

Sir David had written these words: If there be any truth in the

story that Newton was led to the theory of gravitation by the

fall of an apple, this bit of wood is probably a piece of the tree

from which Newton saw the apple fall. When I was on a

pilgrimage to the house in which Newton was born, I cut it oŒ

an ancient apple tree growing in the garden.

Thus, although the apple tree blew down in a gale some

time between 1817 and 1820 parts of the tree were still there in

1830, when Brewster cut pieces from its root. At the present

time neither the whereabouts of the map made by Brewster

nor the copy drawn by J.D. Forbes is known to me, however

we do now know what Brewster wrote on the map. I have

searched diligently for these maps! (See note 1, Appendix).

A further account of the apple tree has recently come to

light through the purchase of a small circular lignum vitae

box by the Museum of the Royal Mint. The box contains a

wax portrait bust of Newton and a drawing of

Woolsthorpe Manor together with a hand written inscrip-

tion which contains the facts of Newton’ s life and his

discovery of universal gravitation through the fall of an

apple. It is dated 1835 but essentially repeats that which has

already been stated.

The pictorial evidence of the apple tree

A drawing of the apple tree and its position in relation to

the manor house dated 1820 was made by the Rev. Charles

Turnor (1763 ± 1853), Edmund (1754 ± 1829) Turnor’ s

brother. The caption on the drawing reads:

Woolsthorpe Manor House 1820 C.J. Turnor The Famous

Apple Tree

which is reproduced in ® gure 3.

Figure 3. Newton’s apple tree in the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor, drawn by the Rev. Charles Turnor in 1820. The `fan shaped’

protrusion represents the broken trunk of the tree which can be seen in ® gure 4. (Private collection.)

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The earliest picture of the apple tree yet to come to light

dates from 1816 and is reproduced as ® gure 4. It shows the

apple tree from a position facing in a direction parallel to

the Manor House. The inscription appended to it reads:

A copy made from a drawing made in the year 1816 of a

decayed apple tree situated in an orchard adjoining the manor

house at Woolsthorpe, a hamlet of Colsterworth, once the

property of the Newtons, but now in the possession of

Edmund Turnor Esq and is supposed to be the same tree from

which Sir Isaac Newton beheld the fall of an apple which

suggested to the mind of that great man the doctrine of

gravity.

From ® gure 3 it can be seen that the strange fan like’

protrusion which appears at the back of the vertical

branch in Charles Turnor’ s drawing is in fact the broken

trunk of the tree lying on the ground. It is clear from

these two drawings that the tree had already blown down

before 1820 and it seems to have established itself in this

position. The canopy at the top of the vertical branch is

growing and would have taken some time to have

established itself. Although Charles Turnor was not a

trained artist, we shall see later that there is good reason

to believe that this drawing is a factual representation of

what he observed. In comparing the two drawings it will

be noticed that the end of the prone trunk in ® gure 4 has

been sawn oΠcleanly. From the fact that there are two

canopies being supported by the broken trunk, it is

evident that the tree was obtaining su� cient nutrients to

support them.

A third drawing, of unknown date, appears in Charles

Turnor’ s Newtoniana Vol. 1, p.122, The Royal Society,

London. On the reverse of the drawing is the inscription:

N-W view of the manor house at Woolsthorpe drawn by

G.Rowe, Chillingham from the original picture in my posses-

sion by Thos Harrison.

Figure 4. Newton’s apple tree as it appeared in 1816, taken from a position at right angles to the view in ® gure 3. (Reproduced by

permission of The Royal Society, London.)

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Limitations on space does not permit a reproduction of

this drawing however it contains some artistic licence, for

the house appears to stand on level ground but in fact the

site slopes quite markedly. Apart from this it is clear that

the apple tree is the one illustrated in ® gures 3 and 4 and is

shown bearing two large canopies of leaves. The where-

abouts of the original painting is at present unknown.

These are the earliest pictures of the apple tree of which I

know, however it is likely that several others exist for in the

early 1820s many artists visited Woolsthorpe and made

drawings of the house. The signatures of some of these

artists appear in the ® rst volume of the visitors book which

was kept from 1820 to 1943. (see Appendix)

And so it was that by the early part of the eighteenth

century the account of Newton’s discovery of universal

gravitation was in print and by the end of the century

an ancient and venerated apple tree had been identi ® ed

as growing in the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor. The

obvious question is why this tree should have been

chosen to be the subject of the account, for nowhere in

any of the early versions is a particular tree mentioned.

It is due to Professor John Robison (1739 ± 1805 ,

Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of

Edinburgh) that a clue to the answer to this question

exists. Robison was collecting material for a biography

of Newton and commissioned the artist J.C. Barrow

(¯ .1782 ± 1802) to make a series of drawings of

Woolsthorpe Manor. At least nine were made on 3

and 4 August 1797 . I ® rst saw two of these as

watercolours in the Grantham Public Library and

Museum. They were removed from their frames for

photographing and were examined to discover what if

anything was written on their reverse sides. The contents

of these frames was totally unexpected.

Between the watercolour and backing board of one of

the drawings was an accurate plan of the house and

surrounding lands, ® gure 5, and appended to the map was

the following statement:

This is one of four views of the house in which Sir Isaac Newton

was born. They were taken by Mr J.C. Barrow, an artist, by

desire of Mr Robison who visited Colsterworth in the course of

a journey to London in the year 1796 to attend as a witness for

Mr. Watt’ s patent for the steam engine. I have thought it right

to give this explanation as I accompanied Mr Robison on that

occasion and am personally acquainted with the history of these

drawings. These two framed by R. Robison 1814.

The inscription is signed by Rachael Wright Robison, the

wife of John. In order to indicate the precise detail and

historical signi ® cance of Barrow’ s watercolours I thought it

important to reproduce the north west view in ® gure 6,

which can be seen to have been taken from the observation

points OB.

There are several points to note about this map. Of prime

importance is the position of the orchard; it is the walled

enclosure lying to the north of the manor house, and there

is an entrance to it just to the east of the kitchen garden.

The second point to note is that Barrow has not shown the

`garden’ to the house on his map. The garden can, however,

be seen in the view of the house from the observation point

OB (® gure 6) and was, in 1797 , separated from the house by

a hedge.

The Barrow watercolours relate to a period 130 years

after the incident of the apple, and it could be argued

that considerable changes may have taken place to the

house and its environs over such a long period of time.

The fact that this was not the case is shown in the

following drawing. William Stukeley (1687 ± 1765), anti-

Figure 5. A detailed site plan of Woolsthorpe Manor drawn by

J.C. Barrow in August 1797, showing the position of the manor

house, orchard and farmyard. The garden of the house is oŒthe

bottom of the plan across a little lane. (Reproduced by

permission of Lincolnshire County Council and Grantham

Museum.)

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quarian, doctor of medicine and friend of Newton

visited Woolsthorpe Manor early in the eighteenth

century in the course of collecting material for a

biography of Newton, and made the sketch of the house

shown in ® gure 7. Although the drawing is somewhat

crude, the house is perfectly recognizable, as is the door

into what we now recognize as the orchard. There thus

appears to be little alteration to the layout of the

garden, orchard and farmyard from 1720 to the end of

the eighteenth century.

Returning to the contents of the Barrow water colours at

Grantham, the second one contained a detailed ¯ oor plan

of the house and an engraving of the manor dated 1772.

The engraving is accurate but fails to show the site of `the

tree’ . One might have expected Tinkler, the artist, to have

included it in his composition, as Newton’ s account had

been in print for 50 years, and it seems that the tree was

being cherished by this time. The tree does not appear in

Stukeley’ s drawing either and he obtained the account

directly from Newton. This drawing dates from the 13

October 1721 (see the letter to Dr Mead in 1727, and

discussed in The Saturday Magazine, 1824 , p.13), and

Stukeley may not have been aware of the story till ® ve years

after this visit which could explain the omission. I must

admit to a certain amount of `ingenuity’ in this explanation,

for there is no evidence that Newton ever identi ® ed a tree

himself; the tree was I believe chosen by force of

circumstance.

The inscription on the Barrow plan states that there are

four drawings of the house. The two in Grantham Art

Gallery and Museum are from opposite compass points,

and it may well be that the missing two were taken from the

other two compass points. If this were the case then one of

them would be expected to show an accurate view of the

apple tree propped up as Walker described in his letter to

the Royal Astronomical Society.

At this point my enquiries were directed to Mr R.N

Smart, archivist at The University of St Andrews. It soon

transpired that some of the Barrow drawings were

mentioned in Robison’s will. Three of them were framed

in a single oak frame, and they were given to Professor J.D.

Forbes by Sir John Robison (Professor John Robison’s

son). After a protracted search, these drawings turned up in

the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. It turned out, to

my considerable frustration, that two of the drawings were

the original measure drawings from which the Grantham

watercolours were taken. The northwest view is numbered

4 and the southeast view 3. The third drawing was of the

interior of the bedroom in which Newton was born and

appears to be unnumbered. Where were the other drawings

mentioned by Mrs Robison?

Eventually four more of the Barrow series of drawings

came to light in Prof. J.D. Forbes’ scrap book at the

University of St Andrews. The only exterior view was a

distant prospect of the manor house and farm buildings

from the southeast. The three interior views were of the

kitchen and main staircase in the manor and a zig-zag brick

arch which is in an ancient cottage nearby. Three of the

drawings are numbered, the highest being 9. Thus there

were at least nine drawings in the series and only seven are

as yet known to me. It is beyond credulity that J.C.Barrow

would have done such an extensive series of drawings

without including the, by then famous, apple tree. However

if it still exists, it has eluded me.

Returning to the Barrow map (® gure 5), it will be seen

that the garden, which by 1797 was hedged, was separated

from the house by a little lane. In Newton’ s day however

there was no dividing hedge, as can be seen in the sketch of

Stukeley (® gure 7). Thus, apart from the presence of the

hedge, the house and grounds which Barrow documented

were much the same as in Newton’ s day. Many more prints

Figure 6. The northwest view of Woolsthorpe Manor, August

1797 by J.C. Barrow. On the right of the picture can be seen the

hedge which at this time divided the house from its garden.

(Reproduced by permission of Lincolnshire County Council and

Grantham Museum.)

Figure 7. Woolsthorpe Manor drawn by William Stukeley on

13 August 1721. The gate into the orchard can be seen on the left

of the drawing.

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and drawings of the house exist and several discuss the

presence of the apple tree, however they do not materially

alter the picture which I have given.

The identi ® cation of a particular apple tree at Woolsthorpe

As far as I have been able to discover no account of the

apple tree story from the early part of the eighteenth

century associates a particular tree with the incident.

However there is no doubt that within possibly 50 years

of Newton’ s death, an apple tree was being cherished as

the tree from which the apple fell’ . The pressing question is

why any particular tree should be associated with Newton’ s

account. The answer to this turns out to be remarkably

simple. As the account describes Newton sitting in his

garden when the incident occurred, the tree from which the

apple fell selected itself because it was the only apple tree

growing in his garden. Newton’ s garden was totally distinct

from his orchard and the rest of the property, as we have

seen. Had the account said that the incident occurred in his

orchard, then it would have been impossible to associate

the story with any speci® c tree.

The fact that the apple tree was the only one growing in

Newton’ s garden is mentioned by Professor George Forbes

in his note to the The Royal Society, and it appears that the

account came from Brewster. Thus if the original account is

correct, and Newton did see an apple fall from a tree in `his

garden ’ , the ancient tree which Charles Turnor drew, and

which had been cherished for generations as the actual tree,

was most probably chosen because it was the sole candidate

for the role.

The propagation of the apple tree in the nineteenth century

Beneath a copy of a drawing/lithograph of the fallen apple

tree now in the possession of The Royal Society (Figure 4)

which appears in Volume I of Charles Turnor’ s six volume

work, Newtoniana , is the following inscription:

NEWTON’S APPLE TREE AS IT WAS IN 1840

On its reverse is the following statement:

The celebrated apple tree in the garden of Woolsthorpe Manor

drawn by F. Howison in 1840 from a lithograph sketched about

the year 1820. I had some grafts taken from this tree which was

then much decayed, and there are now (1840) two thriving

apple trees growing from it. One is in the orchard of George

Carrington Esq. of Missenden Abbey, Bucks, and the other is in

the garden of Mr. George Dodd, paper maker, at Cheneys in

the said county

C.T. June 1840

This is the only contemporary record I have managed to

trace of the propagation of Newton’ s apple tree. It is of

considerable concern to me that several generations after

these trees were propagated they were cut down because of

ignorance of what they were.

Although there appear to be no contemporary records of

the propagation of Newton’ s apple tree in the records of

Lord Brownlow at Belton Park, there is evidence that the

tree was propagated there early in the last century. Belton

Park lies about six miles northeast of Grantham and the

Turnors and Brownlows were neighbours. This came to

light when Sir Stephen Tallents considered establishing a

garden of historical plants in 1937 [9]. During a conversa-

tion between Christopher Turnor (the then owner of

Woolsthorpe Manor), and Sir Stephen Tallents at Broad-

casting House in 1939, the existence of a scion of Newton’s

apple tree growing at Belton Park was mentioned.

Subsequently a scion of this tree was grafted at the Fruit

Research Station at East Malling and it is from this

material that most of the Newton apple trees planted

worldwide come.

Some doubt was expressed in the early 1950s that the two

sources of Newton’ s apple tree were in fact the same

variety. However subsequent comparisons of the wood,

foliage and fruit of the two trees showed them both to be

the same rare variety, Flower (or Pride) of Kent. An early

mention of this variety appears in John Parkinson’ s,

Paradesus (1629) . Today the variety Flower of Kent is very

uncommon and only about one in 300 samples of apple sent

for identi ® cation to the Fruit Research Centre at East

Malling turn out to be of this variety. Thus, although there

is no documentary evidence to show that the propagation

from Woolsthorpe to Belton took place, the fact that they

are of the same rare variety lends support to the account.

However, see later!

The Newton apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor

The apple tree over which I tumbled in September 1977 is

shown in a recent photograph in ® gure 8 from approxi-

mately the same position as Charles Turnor made his

drawing in 1820 (® gure 3). The barn which used to be

attached to the house was removed after the last war but

apart from this the scene is much the same as it was 178

years earlier. From the Turnor drawing and the 1816

lithograph (® gure 4) it will be observed that the root of

the tree originally grew about 8 feet nearer the line of the

buildings. If the tree illustrated in ® gures 3 and 4 is the

one from which Newton saw the apple fall, one might

assume that it was planted about the year 1650 ; it would

then have grown for about 170 years before it blew down.

Comparing the Turnor drawing and the 1816 lithograph

con® rms that the tree was supporting two leaf canopies

and that it must then have been receiving su� cient

nutrients through its broken trunk to support this growth.

Several accounts state that the original apple tree at

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Woolsthorpe was cut down and Mr Turnor had it made

into a chair (see ® gure 9). Charles Turnor’s drawing which

appears in Newtoniana (Vol.1) is a good likeness of the

actual chair in the modern photograph and thus there is

every reason to believe that his drawing of the apple tree

and manor house (® gure 4) is similarly accurate. From

Walker’ s statement we know that the tree blew down

sometime before 1820 . However the root of the tree was

not removed, for Brewster took samples in 1830 and

Charles Turnor described the tree as still standing in 1840.

It must be pointed out that although Charles Turner

describes `Newton’ s apple tree as it was in 1840’ the

drawing is the one of 1816 and he may have meant that

the copy was made in 1840.

Comparing the photograph taken in 1998 (® gure 8)

with the Turnor drawing (® gure 3) it can be seen that the

two trees are growing in approximately the same position.

There is also a remarkable similarity between their modes

of growth and orientation. The present trunk lies along

the ground for about 8 feet, has rooted at both ends and

appears to lie on the same line as did the large prone

branch of the tree shown in Turnor’ s drawing. I suggest

that between 1840 and the 1930s the tree was allowed to

grow unmolested to become that which is shown in the

photograph taken sometime between 1927 and 1940

(® gure 10). The tree had undergone some surgery by

1978, (® gure 11) when dendrochronological samples were

taken and considerably more surgery was undertaken by

1998.

Comparing my photograph of March 1978 (® gure 11)

with Turnor’ s drawing it seems possible that the small

branch at the lefthand end of the trunk and the little twig to

its right, grew into the two major ascending branches. The

left hand one was removed by the National Trust sometime

within the last 15 years. The large rising branch in Turnor’s

drawing no longer exists and it may be that it was to its

removal that the early accounts of the taking down of the

tree refers (see note 2).

Whether this is the tree shown in the Turnor drawing or

not remains to be seen, however it was thought important

enough by the then director of Kew Gardens to send a

member of his staŒto collect cuttings from it in 1942 . These

were grafted and sent to the USA in the following year (at

the height of the Second World War) and it is from this

material that several of the Newton apple trees currently

growing in the USA come.

If the Turnor tree and the one in ® gure 11 are one and

the same then the ascending branches must have been

about 160 years old (in 1977). The question arises; is

Newton’ s original apple tree still growing today?

Figure 8. A photograph of the apple tree and the manor house

taken on the 21 March 1998 from approximately the same

position as Charles Turnor made his drawing in 1820 (® gure 3.)

Figure 9. Charles Turnor’s watercolour of the chair made from

some of the wood from Newton’s apple tree, and a modern

photograph of the chair. The watercolour is reproduced by

permission of The Royal Society, London. The chair was at

Stoke Rochford Hall when photographed in 1977, but is now in a

private collection.

Figure 10. Newton’s apple tree as it appeared sometime

between 1927 and 1940 with Woolsthorpe Manor in the

background. (Private collection.)

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In an attempt to resolve this question it was decided to

try and date the tree using dendrochronology.

A dendrochronological investigation of the trees at

Woolsthorpe Manor and Belton Park

Permission was granted by the National Trust for core

samples to be taken, from the positions shown in ® gure 11 :

the work being done on 3 March 1978. This was carried out

by Dr Malcolm Hughes, currently head of the Department

of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona.

The Woolsthorpe Tree

The core taken from position D showed the trunk to be

hollow and little information could be obtained from it. Core

F has a series of 15 widely spaced bands occupying about

60 mm, some 40 further bands which occupy 10 mm and

then a region of undiŒerentiated material. A simple ring

count would indicate that in 1978 the core of this branch was

about 55 years old. One would then conclude that it started

growing in 1923 . However comparison of the photograph

taken sometime between 1927 and 1940 (® gure 10) with that

of 1977 (® gure 11) shows there to be no signi® cant diŒerence

in the appearance in the main rising branch over this period.

Thus one is left to conclude that either the tree grew to its

present size over a maximum period of 17 years (1927 ± 1940)

putting on 55 rings and then ceased growing altogether, or a

simple ring count gives no indication of its age. Further

comparison of the bases of the rising branches in the two

photographs indicates that the tree has wasted slightly,

rather than growing, over the last 40 or 50 years. It should

also be pointed out that Miss Marion Woollerton, the last

person to be born at Woolsthorpe Manor, remembers this

tree when she was a child before the First World War.

The Belton Park Tree

Permission was obtained from Lord Brownlow to take core

samples from the tree at Belton Park and this work was

carried out on the same day as that done at Woolsthorpe.

Very similar results were obtained. A period of rapid

growth was followed by a period of very slow growth and

then material with undetectable diŒerentiation occurred.

We have no supporting documentary material for this tree

and thus nothing of signi ® cance can be deduced. What is

apparent from this study is that, without further research,

apple is not a good subject for dendrochronology. Once

again, lack of space precludes my being able to include a

photograph of this tree, however those who are interested

will ® nd it growing in an old orchard outside the kitchen

garden in a position 33 feet from the Manthorpe ± Belton

boundary wall and 53 feet back from the corner of the wall

of the kitchen garden.

Radiocarbon dating

There is a further avenue open which would, in principal,

allow the age of these trees to be determined, that of

radiocarbon dating. Accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS)

radiocarbon dating requires only mg samples of material

and taking a correlated ring set from the wood adjacent to

the core of the tree could lead to a dating accuracy

considerably better than 6 25 years. This work is

technically complex, time consuming and expensive to

perform, however, and due in large measure to the good

o� ces of Gwen Singleton and Ian Fell of the Educational

Division of Yorkshire Television, this work has com-

menced at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology at

the University of Oxford, where core F, from the rising

branch of the tree at Woolsthorpe shown in ® gure 11, was

under investigation by 1995. Application of the technique

to dating material which may only be 170 years old relies

heavily upon its coming from a period where there was

signi® cant temporal variation of the carbon 14 composi-

tion in the atmosphere. A `window of opportunity’ exists

between 1790 and 1810 but dating at times later than 1820

becomes much more di� cult. The work, although

currently in abeyance, took three samples from core F

and indicated that the centre material originated from

around the years 1810 to 1820.

In so far as this result stands further investigation, it

lends support to the contention that the tree now growing

at Woolsthorpe Manor and known as Newton’ s apple tree

is one and the same tree which Edmund Turner described in

1806 and was drawn by his brother Charles in 1820 . Thus,

although the tree blew down in a storm before the year

1820 and some of it was made into a chair, it appears that

the prone trunk was left to re-root where it fell, for as I

have pointed out earlier, material was collected from it by

Brewster in 1830 .

Figure 11. Newton’s apple tree at Woolsthorpe, showing the

positions from which core samples were taken on the 13 March

1978.

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Genetic ® ngerprinting

Recently work has commenced to genetically ® ngerprint

the many Newton apple trees which have been planted in

the US and the UK since 1943 (see New Scientist, 6

September 1997). Although the work is at a preliminary

stage it has already been discovered that the doubts which

were expressed in the 1950s may have been well founded.

Although the various specimens of the tree look super-

® cially very similar there seems to be two separate varieties

of apple tree currently being propagated as ` Newton’ s

apple’ . It has yet to be con® rmed whether these relate

uniquely to the Woolsthorpe or to the Belton tree. Even

more recently it has been suggested that it may be possible

to extract DNA from the `Walker log’ at the RAS which

could then show which if either of the trees which are used

for propagation is related to the original tree in Turnor’ s

drawing of 1820 . At present, although attempts have been

made to extract DNA from dead wood, these have been

unsuccessful. This is an interesting area of research and

more work is needed to establish whether or not DNA

extraction is possible.

Comments, summary and conclusions

Over the years, several authors have expressed doubt

concerning the veracity of the account which Newton gave

of his discovery of universal gravitation. Whiteside [10]

claims that as Newton’s original calculation from 1665/6has not come to light the account which Newton gave

`must be demoted to mere unsupported anecdote’ . With

the wealth of documentary evidence which exists of

Newton’ s own account of his discovery of universal

gravitation it appears to me that Whiteside’ s position is,

to say the least, somewhat extreme. For my part, I am

content to accept Newton’ s account, for it seems unlikely

to me that a man who was acknowledged to be the

greatest mathematician and scientist of his age, and who

stood in the deepest awe of the judgement of God would

put his immortal soul in jeopardy by fabricating such an

unnecessary falsehood.

Considerable direct and indirect evidence sets the place

of the incident as his garden at Woolsthorpe Manor. There

is no evidence to suggest that Newton identi ® ed a particular

apple tree, however within possibly a few decades of his

death a tree had been associated with the account and was

being cherished as `the apple tree’ . The reason for this

appears simply to have been that the apple tree was the

only one in his garden. By the year 1806, when it was ® rst

mentioned by Edmund Turnor, the tree would have been

about 150 years old, and within the next decade had been

blown down in a gale. By this time it had been propagated

to several sites. Although it is stated by George Forbes, that

the tree was removed by its owners, the existing evidence

indicates that only part of the tree was removed to be made

into a chair. This we know from Brewster’ s cutting material

from its root in 1830. Further in the opening quotation

from Rigaud he points out that the chair made from some

of the wood was then at Woolsthorpe in 1843. It seems

unlikely that the tree which had been growing in a prone

position for 25 years could have been taken down, sawn up,

seasoned and made into a chair all in the space of a couple

of years. With these facts in mind I would like to suggest

that the prone hollow trunk which is rooted at each end

and is today still growing at Woolsthorpe Manor is the

prone branch of the tree drawn by Charles Turnor in 1820,

and is one and the same tree which was identi® ed as the tree

from which Newton saw an apple fall in the year 1665/6. If

this is the case, the apple tree must now be about 350 years

old.

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the debt of gratitude which I owe to

the late Major H.B. Turnor, without who’s assistance and

encouragement the investigation would have been stillborn.

I am also indebted to the late Professor Sir Edward Bullard

FRS for his considerable assistance with the investigation.

He spent some time investigating the story and was

responsible for planting a Newton apple tree at the

National Physical Laboratory in Teddington when he was

the director. Mr R.N. Smart of the University of St

Andrews was of great help in tracing the Forbes material.

Further I wish to thank Mr L.P. Townsend, one time

archivist at the Royal Society, for his work in tracing

material in their possession. Ms Marion Woollerton has

also been of considerable assistance in providing informa-

tion concerning her family’ s connection with Woolsthorpe

Manor. I am also indebted to the staΠat the Grantham

Public Library and Art Gallery, and the staŒat the Royal

Scottish Museum in Edinburgh for help with the Barrow

drawings. Although I have only made passing reference to

the Fruit Research Station at East Malling in Kent, I have

received considerable help throughout the investigation.

My brother J.S. Keesing at the Royal Botanical Gardens at

Kew and staŒat the botanical gardens in Cambridge have

also been of considerable assistance.

Further, the members of the Spalding Gentlemen’s

Society and staŒat the Lincoln Public Records o� ce have

been very helpful in the investigation. I also wish to

acknowledge a debt of gratitude to my colleague Dr N.

Anderson of the Department of Mathematics in the

University of York for uncovering Newton’s connections

with Yorkshire.

Finally I wish to thank Dr E.D. Lyman and the late

Professor J.O. Young and the many staŒat the University of

Nebraska who invited me to go out and describe the results

of this investigation, for without this stimulus the material

may never have been put together in a recognizable form.

R. G. Keesing390

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Appendix

The Woolsthorpe Manor visitors book

Visitors books were kept at Woolsthorpe manor by the

Woolerton family from 1820 to 1943, and the three volumes

are presently in their possession. Several years ago a

micro ® lm copy was made which I still have. It contains

some 4000 signatures, the most famous of which is that of

A. Einstein of Berlin who visited the house on the 6th June

1930. The names of some of the artists (and dates of their

visits) who are referred to in the text and who may have

recorded the tree are: Benjamin Johnson (18 March 1822);

George Shepherd (28 August 1822); George Long, J.

Kilvington and John Hart (3 October 1822) .

Notes

1. The two copies of the Woolsthorpe maps mentioned by

George Forbes: the original Brewster map is thought to

have been lost in the disastrous ® re at the Brewster ±

McPhearson’ s home in 1909. The J.D. Forbes copy was in

the archives of the Royal Society until the last war when the

material was dispersed for `safe keeping’ and possibly not

returned.

2. Very recently I was informed by Professor Robert Reid

(Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at MIT) that on a visit to

Belton Park to take samples from the Newton apple tree for

genetic ® ngerprinting, he was told that it had been

destroyed because it had canker. Several months later I

visited Belton to make enquiries about the incident and was

shown the tree standing where I had photographed it 20

years earlier. What in fact had happened was that a branch

had been removed to control the canker but otherwise the

tree was unharmed!

References

[1] McKie, D., and de Beer, G. R., 1951, Notes and Records of the Royal

Society (London: The Royal Society).

[2] c.1727, John Conduitt’ s biographical notes; the Portsmouth Manu-

scripts (Kings College, Cambridge).

[3] Turnball, W.H. (ed). The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 1977

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Vol. 11, p. 444.

[4] de Voltaire F.M.A. An Essay Upon the Civil Wars of France extracted

from curious manuscripts. And also upon the Epic Poetry of the

European Nations from Homer down to Milton, 1727, (London: Samuel

Jollasson), 104.

[5] The Principle s of the Philosophy of the Expansive and Contractive

Force, or an Enquiry into the principles of the Modern Philosophy, that

is into the General Chief rational Sciences, 1727, (Cambridge:

Cornelius Craw® eld), 972.

[6] Conduitt, J. et al. The Portsmouth Manuscripts (King’ s College

Library, Cambridge).

[7] John Conduitt (Keynes MS 130.4) King’ s College Library, Cambridge,

10 ± 12.

[8] Stukeley, W, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’ s Life (London: Taylor &

Francis), p. 19 ± 20.

[9] The Sir Isaac Newton Apple, Tallents, S. Royal Horticultural Society

Fruit Year Book, (London: Royal Horticulture Society), no. 9, 1956.

[10] Whiteside, P. J., Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 1991,

(London), 45.

R.G. Keesing is a lecturer in the Department of

Physics at the University of York and has had an

abiding interest in the history and philosophy of

science for most of his life. His early experimental

research was in high energy resolution electron ±

atom scattering; however he became interested in

the fundamentals of the photoemission process

and carried out research into quantum tunnelling

through atomically clean surfaces upon which

atom layers had been deposited. This was in an

attempt to discover how signi® cant the process of

`electron blooming’ could be in practice. He is

currently investigating the phenominon of `single

bubble sonoluminescence’ to discover what part,

if any, the quantum vacuum plays in the emission

of the radiation.

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